From Politico, an article by Michael Brown ( former FEMA Director) title Stop Blaming Me for Hurricane Katrina. Ten years later, the name ‘Brownie’ is still identified with the government’s failures. Here’s what really happened.
Be sure to read the comments from readers too.
Recovery Diva 
Thanks for adding those insider details.
Mike Brown was totally out of his element as FEMA Director. James Lee Witt, the Director under President Clinton, was an experienced disaster manager with self-confidence, great leadership skills, and a strong connection to the White House. Mike Brown was a nice enough guy, but lacked some of these strengths. During his tenure, FEMA was shredded by the Bush Administration, and by the time Katrina hit it was too late to do much.
There was plenty of warning of this. In March 2004, Witt testified before a Congressional committee. Quoting from Witt’s testimony:
“I am extremely concerned that the ability of our nation to prepare for and respond to disasters has been sharply eroded … I hear from emergency managers, local and state leaders and first responders nearly every day that the FEMA they knew and worked well with has now disappeared. In fact one state emergency manager told me ‘it is like a stake has been driven into the heart of emergency management.’ … They are concerned that the successful partnership that was built and honed over many years between local, state and federal partners and their ability to communicate, coordinate, train, prepare and respond has gone down hill. And they are at a loss as to how to work with the federal government now and fear for their communities should a catastrophic disaster occur.”
– March 24, 2004, oral testimony of former FEMA Director James Lee Witt before the House Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations and the House Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs.
Around the same time, the president of our FEMA HQ employees’ union, Pleasant Mann, wrote to Congress. (Disclaimer: I was the union’s VP and helped on the letter.) The letter detailed problems at FEMA, and concluded:
“The American people count on FEMA to be there to pick up the pieces after a hurricane, a terrorist attack, or any type of emergency. FEMA employees are willing and able to do that, but our capability is being drained away and it may soon be gone unless timely action can be taken to remedy these problems.”
Mann’s letter to Congress was dated June 21, 2004, a little more than a year before Hurricane Katrina.
Emergency management is a team sport that requires constant training, planning, exercising, dialogue, etc. among all parties – FEMA, other Feds, the military, State & local governments, private companies, NGO’s, and the public. This has to be ongoing, and must be done well before the event, not just the day of the disaster.
These things take staff time, which means money, and had been cut back tremendously under Bush. So problems like how to evacuate people must be discussed well in advance to sort out the problems and obstacles that Brown cites in his op-ed. In fact, many of these problems were identified a year before Katrina in the Hurricane Pam exercise, but were never addressed. At the same time, FEMA’s staff and budget were whittled down to allow the Bush Administration to shift resources to Homeland Security and fight its Middle East wars without raising taxes.
Mike Brown either knew all this and went along with it, or did not realize it and so was clueless. Imagine a pro football coach who decides to save money by having his team skip summer training camp, cancels weekly practices and workouts, and lets his best players go, and then when his team loses badly he says innocently, “Well I told them what play to run. Not my fault they dropped the ball.”
A lawyer’s answer. But then…
Leo Bosner
FEMA Employee 1979 -2008
Just look at the video of Brown briefing Bush and Chertoff and you will see who is at fault.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEpdx0uPDxg or read the transcript.
Curiously the whole unedited video has disappeared from the internet. It was just there yesterday.
I did watch the video and I agree with you that Brown tried hard to be convincing.
Living in MS at the time of Katrina, it was pretty clear that Nagin and Blanco were the ones primarily at fault. Comparing Blanco’s performance as LA guv vs Haley Barbour’s as MS guv is a lot like comparing a petulant child to a mature adult. Further, it was Nagin’s late call for evacuation that left police officers in NOLA too little time to take care of their families and that in many cases made it nearly impossible to get back to the city until well after the storm hit. The cops weren’t AWOL – they were stabbed in the back by an incompetent city administration and then hung out to dry.
In the big picture, though, Congress is the one ultimately to blame: inconsistent funding for preparedness and mitigation, off-budget funding for disasters, and especially a lack of agreement about what the federal role should be in recovery. To her great credit, Sen Mary Landrieu tried mightily to put some fixes in place, but could not get the support of her own party (she did have some Republican support).
Brown has tried to clear the air about the unfortunate characterization that the media developed about him after Katrina. I think he got a bad rap.
Appreciate your posting this as part of the story. In the Spike Lee Documentary “If God Be Willin’ and Da Creek Don’t Rise,” Michael Brown (five years after Katrina) describes his meetings with President Bush, assigning responsibility for decisions upstairs, not sideways or down. Add Spike Lee’s documentaries to the record. A full view awaits an even more accurate play-by-play. I applaud any and all who are trying make sense and sanity amidst the vast and conflicting views of history in the making.